Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Nissin Di466 4/3rd Mount with Olympus XZ-1

One of the accessory that I bought with the Olympus XZ-1 was an external flash. Although the XZ-1 came with a built-in flash, it is rated at 8.6 Guide Number (GN) @ ISO100. Although it serves its purpose reasonably well, from past experience with indoor photography, 8.6 meters (8.6 GN is approximately 8.6 metres range) is insufficient.

I was initially a little unsure whether the Nissin Di466 will work well with the XZ-1 as there were little confirmation online and I could not really find any images with the Di466 attached to the XZ-1 (hence the picture above for the rest of you!). The Di466 is rated at GN33 @ ISO100, which should be reasonably sufficient for indoor photography (especially for parties and with fast moving kids … well, the XZ-1 is technically still not that great for such an event as the Auto-Focus is not as fast as a full blown dSLR, but that’s another story altogether).

Other than pure reach of the external flash, it must be noted that the ability to bounce the light is of extreme importance. This is in order to avoid any harsh lighting, such as that in the picture above. It was directly from the built-in flash of my Panasonic LZ8.

Like all external flashes, the Di466 also came with a built-in diffuser. Of course it is just a basic diffuser and serves it’s purpose well.

Although it is a smallish external flash, it uses 4 AA sized batteries (I use Maha Imedions). Another plus point on having an external flash is that the battery for the XZ-1 will last longer. If the built-in flash is used consecutively, from my estimates, you will probably get less than 200 shots on one battery charge (I may be wrong here, but it is just a rough estimate from my earlier test shots).

The Di466 can be triggered remotely and wirelessly! Although I don’t think it is able to function with it’s TTL whilst in wireless mode, this capability comes in handy. It is triggered using the built-in flash and works very well.